Journalism Faculty Publications

Kerner Plus 20: Minority News Coverage in the Columbus Dispatch—A Comparative Content Study

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:20 PDT

Surviving to the Top: A Study of Minority News Executives

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:17 PDT

Who’s Making the News? Changing Demographics of Newspaper Newsrooms

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:15 PDT

Race and the Politics of Promotion in Newspaper Newsrooms

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:11 PDT

It's one thing to hire people of color to help "balance" the newsroom, but once minority journalists are on-board as reporters and editors, the culture of the newsroom tends to exclude and isolate them. Responses by 1,328 newspaper journalists to a national survey shows that the newspaper industry's efforts to correct the lack of newsroom and news content diversity may have been something less than a complete success. As the old rules change, those entrenched in the newsroom exhibit increasing resistance to the new, multicultural order. At least, that's how it appears to the newcomers. Minorities and women in U.S. daily newspaper newsrooms say glass ceilings sharply limit their professional opportunities, but white men don't think the ceiling exists. Whites do think that minorities get preferential treatment in hiring, assignments and promotions, but minority journalists say that whatever extra benefit minorities may get in hiring evaporates once they are in the newsroom. And how important is it, really, to hire staffers of different ethnic and racial backgrounds? Essential, say 74 percent of minorities, but only 49 percent of white journalists. Once on-board, is there equal opportunity in training and assignments? No, everyone agrees. More than 53 percent of white journalists say minorities get just as many opportunities to succeed as anyone else, but 65 percent of minorities say minority journalists have fewer opportunities than whites. About 30 percent of whites say minority journalists get more opportunities to succeed than do whites. Almost 69 percent of minorities say young minority journalists are hired to fill quotas, and then abandoned. The bottom line: Sharply differing perspectives by race about opportunities and advancement in newspaper newsrooms.

Short People Got No Reason to Live’: Disrupting Heterosexual Ideology in Ally McBeal

B. Cooper et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:08 PDT

One Daily Shows Virtually No Change in Coverage of Minorities Since 1965

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:04 PDT

Publishing Books

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:02:01 PDT

WISE COMMENTATORS have long evaluated books and bookmaking. "Man builds no structure which outlives a book," wrote Eugene Fitch Ware in The Book, and Justin M'Carthy's A Ballade of Book-Making declared, "The critics challenge and defend ... of making books there is no end." Others have written loving odes to the book. Garrison Keillor, for instance: The book is a "great and ancient invention," he marveled, "slow to hatch, as durable as a turtle, light and shapely as befits a descendant of the tree .... A handsome, useful object begotten by the passion for truth ... [books] contain our common life and keep it against the miserable days when meanness operates with a free hand, and save' it for the day when the lonesome reader opens the cover and the word is resurrected. "

The Fairness Factor

Everette E. Dennis et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:58 PDT

As THE FIRST POST-COLD WAR ADMINISTRATION takes office in Washington, there is general agreement that the media will play a significant role in its success or failure. Whether Americans wish President Clinton well or ill, they will all agree on at least one thing: that the media ought to be fair in reporting his efforts.

The Media Scoreboard, Final Round: Lessons of Campaign ’92

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:56 PDT

The role of the press as the conveyer and often the interpreter of events has been vastly altered by this campaign, agreed the panel of media and political experts, professionals and scholars who met at the Center IO days after the election for the final round of discussions on "The Media and Campaign '92." But whether the candidates' fairly successful attempt at an end run around the news media through the use ofTV and radio talk shows is a lasting change remains to be seen.

Assessing Coverage: A Survey of Campaign Correspondents

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:52 PDT

Who’s Covering What in the Year of the Women?

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:49 PDT

Top NEWS IN 1992-government and political news. Least prominent: agriculture and transportation. In a presidential election year, that's not too surprising. But who wrote what? Examination of a sample of front pages of 10 newspapers circulating to almost 8 million Americans every day from January through December offers some insights into news content and story assignments in the Year of the Woman.

Symposium—In the Media, A Woman’s Place

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:46 PDT

FOR WOMEN AND THE MEDIA, 1992 was a year of sometimes painful change-the aftermath of the Anita HillClarence Thomas hearings; the public spectacle of a vice president's squabble with a fictional TV character; Hillary Rodham Clinton's attempt to redefine the role of the political wife; election of women to Congress and to state offices in unprecedented numbers.

The Media and Women Without Apology

Everette E. Dennis et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:43 PDT

WHETHER IT IS a rejuvenated sense of urgency or simply the last straw of impatience in the latest "year of the woman," something new is in the air when people talk about women and the media. Conversations with people who care about mass communication, the larger society and how women are portrayed in or employed by print and electronic media have taken on a new, sharper tone in recent years, especially in 1992.

No Train, No Gain: Continuing Education in Newspaper Newsrooms

Eric Newton et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:39 PDT

Radio—The Forgotten Medium

Everette E. Dennis et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:35 PDT

ASK ABOUT "THE MEDIA" and people think first of television, then newspapers. Sometimes, though not always, they acknowledge the existence of radio. But it is not uncommon for media critics to ignore radio altogether in their treatment of the larger modern media mix. Although the average American owns multiple radios and lives with this most portable medium in every room in the house, in the office, the car and even in parks, mountain retreats and at the beach, radio is rarely the topic of public discussion, giving it the dubious identity of "the forgotten medium." This, the oldest of the broadcast media and once the king of electronic media, has moved farther and farther back in the media family photo. Occasionally there are references in the press to a radio station sale, a new radio network or a controversy first ignited on radio, but such sightings of radio in the public discourse are cameo appearances, like those of a once-famous leading actor reduced to walk-on or character roles. Radio, however, is much more than a bit player or an aging "maiden aunt," as more than one author in this Journal suggest.

The Diplomat’s View of the Press and Foreign Policy: A Conversationwith Jack F. Matlock Jr

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:33 PDT

JACK F. MATLOCK JR., a career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era and as ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, is Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Matlock began his lifelong study of the Soviet Union in the early 1950S and joined the State Department as a Soviet analyst in 1956, subsequently serving in various capacities in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. From 1983 to 1986, he was senior director of European and Soviet Affairs for the National Security Council, and was named by Ronald Reagan ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1987. Journal Editor Edward C. Pease interviewed him in early August at his home in Connecticut.

Global News After the Cold War

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:30 PDT

WITH THE BREAKUP of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War ended. The media not only watched, but played a crucial role in the years after 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, as rapid developments dramatically changed the world as we had known it. Images of seminal change agents in what had been the Eastern bloc-Gorbachav, Lech Walesa, Vadav Havel-facing leaders from the West-Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl and Pope John Paul II-mingled with those of explosions at Chernobyl and Tiananmen Square, the of the Berlin Wall and the Bucharest crowds who brought down a Romanian tyrant. Reagan met with Moscow dissidents. Gorbachev prased the flesh on the streets of New York. In Moscow, an attempt~ coup by old-style Soviet hard-liners failed in large part because of conununication technology-Yeltsin could reach the rest of the world by fax, and CNN showed everyone (Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Bush and the putschists alike) what was happening at the barricades. A new world.

The Race for Content

Everette E. Dates et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:27 PDT

IMAGINE," THE SCENARIO would begin, "a room/place/device/system that will serve all your communication needs for information, entertainment, messaging, home shopping, protective security, banking and much more .... " In countless books, articles, speeches, television documentaries and news programs these and other promises have been made for decades. In his visionary science fiction work, Voices from the Sky, Arthur C. Clarke imagined this and more. So did technologists who thought cable television would be the instrument for multifaceted new media services. Others spoke of a cosy menage a trois of telephone, television and computer, an integrated world of multimedia wonder wherein all forms and functions of communication would converge into a single system, one that some said would eventually be accessible to all people everywhere.

The Father of ‘Talk Show Democracy’—On the Line with Larry King

Edward C. Pease — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:24 PDT

IN THE AFTERMATH of what surely was the most extraordinary presidential campaign ever for the American news media, the Larry King story-like the man himself-has taken on almost mythic proportions: Horatio Alger Makes Good. Real good. Today, the mantle of media greatness rests easy on the selfdescribed "Jewish kid from Brooklyn" in the wake of events that defined the "top banana of talk show hosts" as the undisputed kingmaker of the 1990S. Consider: During the presidential race, Ross Perot announced his candidacy (twice) on "Larry King Live"; after belittling the idea, an uncomfortable (and, finally, desperate) George Bush came on the show late in a losing campaign; and Bill Clinton, mindful of King's role in his victory, promised to be back every six months if he won.

The Presidency in the New Media Age

Everette E. Dates et al. — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:01:20 PDT

Nowhere are the differences between journalism and history more evident than in assessments of the presidency of the United States. If journalism is generously described as "history in a hurry," so is it shortsighted and sloppy as it lurches forward, gathering news in bits and pieces, coming to conclusions based on short-term accomplishments and the court of public opinion.